Liz from San Antonio, Texas, has noticed going west in World War I-era poems, letters, and accounts, usually meaning to die or be killed in combat. The euphemism go west is older than the war and is especially associated with writing from Scotland and Ireland. Its likeliest source is the daily image of the sun setting in the west, making the end of a life like the end of a day. Fanciful explanations involving a westward walk to a hanging place or the card game whist don’t hold up, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s elves going west may draw on the same familiar metaphor and are not the source of it. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Go West” as a Euphemism for Dying Likely Comes from the Setting Sun”
Hi there. You have A Way with Words.
Yes. Good afternoon. This is Liz Russell. I’m calling from San Antonio, Texas.
Welcome, Liz.
What can we do for you?
Well, I am a World War I history buff, and in a number of poems or accounts, I have read the term going west to describe people who had been, I think, killed in combat.
And I’m wondering where that term originated from and why it’s used so much, especially in World War I writing.
Are these British authors?
Yes, for the most part, I think.
For the most part, yeah. That would make sense to me.
Do you have any lines that you can recite for us where they use Go West in this way?
No, I’m sorry, I don’t. I have a number of books of poetry or letters, especially.
And I am just guessing that it was a general euphemism, maybe just slang from that time period.
Yeah, it’s much older than that. But yeah, for a long time, Go West was almost, there’s two ways
It’s been used. Literarily, like you’re talking about in poetry and so forth and prose, but also
Culturally, it’s very strongly allied with Scotland and Ireland when we think of all the British Isles
Put together. It’s far more common in the writings that you find there. And it typically is believed
To come from the idea that the sun goes down in the West. The end of every day is the sun setting
In the West. You can use the obvious metaphor of when we set our own sun, we are going West,
You know, when our lives are over. There are some other kind of fanciful theories about
The walk to a hanging place being westward of the main town, but I think that’s not true.
And there’s another one that has something to do with whist the game, W-H-I-S-T. That one
Definitely is not true. So generally, it’s just an elaboration on the idea that the sun sets in
The West, and the death of every day is like the death of every man and woman. We go West when we
Die. Well, that explains it. I’ve also, they talked about that in that J.R.R. Tolkien movie,
Like they talked about the elves going West. So a number of times I’ve heard that just as a
Reference. And so I was just curious about it. Well, thank you for answering my question.
Yeah, the Tolkien comparison is very important because he is, by the way, the reason that I’m
Hear on the show today and that I’m involved in any kind of language interested topic at all.
And so he very much had his ear to the language. He understood both etymologies, classical languages,
Languages he invented himself. He could write in runes just off the cuff. And he understand the
Colloquial speech of the people around him because he lived both poor and rich at different times in
His life. So he encountered different kinds of speech. And I would not be surprised if the
Metaphor that he uses for the elves comes from this being a fairly well-known expression where
He was raised. I hope that helps. It sure did. Thank you so very much. Thank you. Take care now.
Okay. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. I want to hear more about how Tolkien set you here. For me, reading those
Books at 10, 11, 12, and seeing these fantastic indices in the back with the languages and the
Alphabets and stuff, and I appreciated him as a writer probably more than I liked the stories. I
Loved the stories, but the fact that he could put a word together. And he resuscitated some of these
Archaic and just obscure, but some cases, words that had already died, he brought them back.
And he put them into his works in such a way that you think, oh, he must have coined that.
But he didn’t.
It’s his own language.
